When working in sheets, it can sometimes be slow to have to 'activate' and 'deactivate' each view when you want to work on it. The native Revit workflow of 'right click -> activate view' and 'right click -> deactivate view' can actually waste a lot of time if you have a lot going on.
One of the strong features of Revit 2011 is the ability to program your own keyboard shortcuts. You probably already use shortcuts to access the visibility graphics dialogue box or to perform any number of other operations. You can assign a two letter combination to perform any operation you want in Revit.
One that I find particularly useful and a huge time saver is assigning my own shortcut to the 'Activate view' and 'Deactivate View' commands. I use 'av' for activate view, and 'dv' for deactivate view although you can use any key combination that you would like. If you are like most users, you probably keep your left hand on your keyboard anyway, so these two key combinations are easily accessible with one hand.
Here is how you go about creating custom keyboard shortcuts:
Select File (Revit icon in upper left corner)-> Options. Click on the User Interface tab then 'Customize' next to Keyboard Shortcuts
Inside the search box, type 'activate', this should filter the commands and show both the Activate and Deactivate commands.
Select the command you want to assign a shortcut to and at the bottom enter the key combination you wish to assign and press 'Assign'. Repeat this for the other commands you wish to assign shortcuts to.
Press OK twice and your shortcuts are now assigned!
